Sabre is forced to take Tassin into the Badlands in order to escape her enemies, much to her horror and despite her protests. At the centre of the radioactive desert, a legacy of the nuclear war centuries ago, is the Death Zone, and no one who has ventured there has survived to tell the tale. When they enter the Zone, Sabre discovers that it is a strange area where slices of other worlds mix with Omega Five’s reality as ever-changing Flux-realities. Tenuous on the outskirts, the Flux-realities become more solid and dangerous as they venture further in, and the cyber’s scanners do not work. Mutated beasts prowl the ever-changing scenery, and a Change can trap the unwary in solid objects such as rocks or trees. They are fortunate to acquire a guide, a furry friend and shape shifter, a Death Zone denizen who agrees to help them cross to the other side.Tassin is gravely ill by the time Sabre carries her out of the Death Zone and across the desert to the living land on the far side of the Badlands. There, they encounter strange cultures, and Sabre often has to rescue the tempestuous and somewhat irritating young queen from various unsavoury characters, into whose clutches she seems to fall with annoying regularity. While he finds her infuriating, Sabre feels something for the girl, but he does not understand his new emotions, he only knows he’s just a damaged killing machine, with no rights, and certainly no chance of finding happiness. Tassin does her best to hide her feelings for Sabre, and finds his apparent lack of interest galling, to say the least.
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